The Love of a Good Woman (30 page)

“The problem is that my husband is really mean and I just don’t know what to do about him. For one thing he has gone and eaten up all our children. It’s not because I don’t give him good meals to eat either because I do. I slave all day over a hot stove and make him a delicious dinner and then he comes home and the first thing he does is pull a leg off the baby—”

“Now stop,” said Ann, not smiling anymore. “Just stop, Karin.”

“But I really want to know,” said Karin, in a subdued but stubborn voice.
“Can
this marriage be saved?”

All last year, when she thought of the place where she most wanted to be, Karin had thought of this kitchen. A big room whose corners stayed dim even when the light was on. The patterns of green leaves brushing the windows. All the things here and there that strictly speaking didn’t belong in a kitchen. The treadle sewing machine and the big overstuffed armchair, its maroon covering oddly worn to gray-green on the armrests. The large painting of a waterfall done long ago by Ann’s mother
when she was just a bride and had the time, which she never had again.

(“A lucky thing for all of us,” said Derek.)

There was the sound of a car in the yard and Karin thought, could it be Rosemary? Had Rosemary been the one to get depressed, left alone; had she followed Karin for company?

When she heard the boots on the kitchen steps she knew it was Derek.

She called out, “Surprise, surprise. Look who’s here!”

Derek came into the room and said, “Hullo Karin,” without a trace of welcome. He set a couple of bags down on the table. Ann said politely, “Did you get the right film?”

“Yes,” said Derek. “What’s this muck?”

“For cleaning the silver,” Ann said. To Karin, as if to apologize, she said, “He’s just been to town to get some film. To take pictures of his rocks.”

Karin bent over the knife she was drying. It would be the worst thing in the world if she should cry (last summer it would have been impossible). Ann asked about some other things—groceries—that Derek had got, and Karin raised her eyes deliberately and fixed them on the front of the stove. It was a kind of stove no longer made, Ann had told her. A combination wood-and-electric stove with a sailing ship stamped on the door of the warming oven. Above the ship, the words C
LIPPER
S
TOVES
.

That, too, she had remembered.

“I’d think Karin could be a help to you,” said Ann. “She could help you set up the rocks.”

There was a slight pause during which they might have looked at each other. Then Derek said, “Okay, Karin. Come on and help me take pictures.”

•    •    •

M
ANY
of the rocks were just sitting around on the barn floor—not yet sorted or labelled. Others sat on shelves, separately displayed, with printed cards to identify them. For some time Derek was silent, moving these around, then fiddling with the camera, trying to get the best angle and the proper light. When he started to take the pictures he gave brief orders to Karin, getting her to shift the rocks or tilt them, and pick up others from the floor, to be photographed even without labels. It didn’t seem to her that he really needed—or wanted—her help at all. Several times he drew in his breath as if he was going to say this—or tell her something else that was important and unpleasant—but then all he said was “Shift to the right a little,” or “Give me a look at the other side.”

All last summer Karin had nagged in her brat way and requested in a serious way to be taken along on one of Derek’s forays, and finally he had said she could come. He made it as hard as he could, a test. They sprayed themselves with Off!, but it didn’t entirely prevent the bugs from getting at them, burrowing into their hair and finding a way under neck bands and shirt cuffs. They had to squelch through boggy places where their boot prints immediately filled up with water, then climb up steep banks covered with berry canes and wild rosebushes and tough, tripping vines. Also clamber over smooth, tilted outcrops of bare rocks. They wore bells around their necks, so that they could locate each other if separated, and so any bears could hear them coming and stay clear.

They came on one big mound of bear scat, with a fresh glisten to it and an apple core only half digested.

Derek had told her that there were mines all through this country. Almost every known mineral was there but usually not enough to make them profitable, he said. He had visited all these abandoned, almost forgotten mines and hacked out his
samples or simply picked them up off the ground. “The first time I brought him home he just disappeared up the ridge and found a mine,” Ann said. “I knew then that he’d probably marry me.”

The mines were a disappointment, though Karin would never have said so. She had been hoping for some Ali Baba cave with a gleam of glittery rocks in the darkness. Instead Derek showed her a narrow entryway, almost a natural split in the rock, blocked off now by a poplar tree that had taken root in that absurd place and grown up crooked. The other entry, that Derek said was the most feasible anywhere, was just a hole in the side of a hill, with rotted beams lying on the ground or still supporting part of the roof and bricks holding back some of the earth and rock rubble. Derek pointed out the faint tracks where the rails had run for the ore cart. Pieces of mica were lying around, and Karin collected some. They at least were beautiful and looked like authentic treasure. They were like flakes of smooth dark glass that turned to silver when you held them to the light.

Derek said she should take just one piece and that for a private keepsake, not to be shown to people. “Keep it under your hat,” he said. “I don’t want talk about this place.”

Karin said, “Do you want me to swear to God?”

He said, “Just remember.” Then he asked her if she wanted to see the castle.

Another disappointment, and a joke. He led her to a cement-walled ruin that he said had probably been a storage place for ore. He showed her the break in the tall trees, filled up with saplings, where the rail line had run. The joke was that some of the hippies had got lost in here a couple of years ago and come out with the report of a castle. Derek hated people making mistakes like that, not seeing what was in front of their eyes or could be figured out with the right information.

Karin walked around the top of the crumbling wall and he did not tell her to watch her footing or be careful she didn’t break her neck.

On the way home there was a thunderstorm and they had to stay inside a heavy thicket of cedars. Karin could not keep still—she couldn’t tell if she was scared or elated. Elated, she decided, and she jumped up and ran in circles, throwing up her arms and shrieking in the brightness of the light that penetrated even this shelter. Derek told her to calm down, just to sit and count to fifteen after each flash and see if that didn’t bring the thunder.

But she thought he was pleased with her. He didn’t think she was scared.

It was the truth, that there were people whom you positively ached to please. Derek was one of them. If you failed with such people they would put you into a category in their minds where they could keep you and have contempt for you forever. Fear of the lightning, fear when she saw the bear scat, or the wish to believe the ruin was the ruin of a castle—even a failure to recognize the different qualities of mica, pyrite, quartz, silver, feldspar—any of that could make Derek decide to give up on her. As he had given up in different ways on Rosemary and Ann. Out here with Karin he was more seriously himself, he paid everything the honor of his serious attention. When he was with her and not with either of them.

“N
OTICE
some elements of doom and gloom around here today?” Derek said.

Karin slid her hands over a piece of quartz that looked like ice with a candle inside. She said, “Is it because of Rosemary?”

“No,” said Derek. “This is serious. Ann got an offer on this place. A shark from Stoco came out and told her some Japanese
company wants to buy it. They want the mica. To build ceramic engine blocks for cars. She’s thinking about it. She can sell it if she wants to. It’s hers.”

Karin said, “Why would she want to? Sell it?”

“Money,” said Derek. “Try money.”

“Doesn’t Rosemary pay her enough rent?”

“How long is that going to last? The pasture isn’t rented this year, the land’s too soggy. The house needs money spent or it’ll fall down. I’ve worked four years on a book that isn’t even finished. We’re running low. You know what the real-estate guy said to her? He said, ‘This could be another Sudbury.’ He didn’t say that for a joke.”

Karin didn’t see why he would. She knew nothing about Sudbury. “If I was rich I could buy it,” she said. “Then you could go on like now.”

“Someday you will be rich,” Derek said matter-of-factly. “But not soon enough.” He was putting the camera away in its case. “Keep on the right side of your mother,” he said. “She’s rich as stink.”

Karin felt her face heat up, she felt the shock of those words. It was something she’d never heard before.
Rich as stink.
It sounded hateful.

He said, “Okay—into town to see when they’ll develop this.” He didn’t ask if she wanted to go along and she could hardly have answered him anyway; her eyes were filling up disastrously. She was struck and blinded by what he’d said.

She had to go to the bathroom, so she walked over to the house.

There was a good smell from the kitchen—the smell of some slow-cooking meat.

The only bathroom was upstairs. Karin could hear Ann up there, moving around in her room. She didn’t call or look in at her. But when she started to go downstairs again, Ann called her.

She had put makeup on her face so it didn’t look so blotchy.

There were piles of clothes lying around on the bed and on the floor.

“I’m trying to get things organized,” Ann said. “There’s clothes here I’d forgotten I had. I have to get rid of some of them once and for all.”

That meant she was serious about moving out. Getting rid of things before she moved out. When Rosemary was getting ready to move out she packed her trunk while Karin was at school. Karin never saw her choose the things that went into it. She just saw them turn up later, in the apartment in Toronto and now in the trailer. A cushion, a pair of candlesticks, a big platter—familiar but forever out of place. As far as Karin was concerned it would be better if she had not brought anything at all.

“You see that suitcase,” Ann said. “Up there on top of the wardrobe? Do you think you could just climb up on a chair and tilt it over the edge so that I could catch it? I tried but I got dizzy. Just tilt it over and I’ll catch it.”

Karin climbed up and pushed the suitcase over so that it teetered on the edge of the wardrobe, and Ann caught it. She thanked Karin breathlessly and plopped it down on the bed.

“I’ve got the key, I’ve got the key here,” she said.

The lock was stiff and the clasps hard to pry open. Karin helped. When the lid fell back a smell of mothballs rose from a heap of limp cloth. The smell was well known to Karin from the secondhand stores where Rosemary liked to shop.

“Are these your mom’s old things?” she said.

“Karin! It’s my wedding dress,” said Ann, half laughing. “That’s only the old sheet it’s wrapped up in.” She picked the grayish cloth away and lifted out a bundle of lace and taffeta. Karin cleared a place for it on the bed. Then very carefully Ann began turning it right side out. The taffeta rustled like leaves.

“My veil, too,” Ann said, lifting a film that clung to the taffeta. “Oh, I should have taken better care of it.”

There was a long fine slit in the skirt that looked as if it could have been made by a razor blade.

“I should have had it hanging up,” said Ann. “I should have had it in one of those bags you get from the cleaner’s. Taffeta is so fragile. That cut came from where it was folded. I knew that too. Never, never fold taffeta.”

Now she began to separate one piece of material from another, lifting it bit by bit with little private sounds of encouragement, until she was able to shake the whole thing into the shape of a dress. The veil was loose on the floor. Karin picked it up.

“Net,” she said. She talked to keep the sound of Derek’s voice out of her head.

“Tulle,” said Ann. “T-u-l-l-e. Lace and tulle. Shame on me for not taking better care. It’s a wonder it lasted as well as it has. It’s a wonder it lasted at all.”

“Tulle,” said Karin. “I never heard of tulle. I don’t think I ever heard of taffeta.”

“They used a lot of it,” Ann said. “Once upon a time.”

“Do you have a picture of you in it? Do you have a picture of your wedding?”

“Mother and Dad had a picture, but I’ve no idea what became of it. Derek isn’t one for wedding pictures. He wasn’t even one for weddings. I don’t know how I got away with it. I had it in the Stoco church, think of that. And I had my three girlfriends, Dorothy Smith and Muriel Lifton and Dawn Challeray. Dorothy played the organ and Dawn was my bridesmaid and Muriel sang.”

Karin said, “What color did your bridesmaid wear?”

“Apple green. A lace dress with chiffon inserts. No, the other way round. Chiffon with lace.”

Ann said all this in a slightly skeptical voice, examining the seams of the dress.

“What did the one who sang sing?”

“Muriel. ‘O Perfect Love.’ O,
Perfect Love, all human love transcending
—but it’s really a hymn. It’s really talking about a divine kind of love. I don’t know who picked it.”

Karin touched the taffeta. It felt dry and cool.

“Try it on,” she said.

“Me?” Ann said. “It’s made for somebody with a twenty-four-inch waist. Did Derek get away to town? With his film?”

She didn’t listen to Karin say yes. She must of course have heard the car.

“He thinks he has to get a pictorial record,” she said. “I don’t know why all the hurry. Then he’s going to get it all boxed and labelled. He seems to think he’s never going to see it again. Did he give you the impression the place was sold?”

“Not yet,” said Karin.

“No. Not yet. And I wouldn’t do it unless I had to. I won’t do it unless I have to. Though I think I will have to. Sometimes things just become necessary. People don’t have to make it all into a tragedy or some personal kind of punishment.”